ERIC ZWIGART

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Who Is Eric Zwigart? Six Questions, Answered

Eric Zwigart

Key Takeaways

  • I founded RPP Products, a Southern California automotive oil and chemical manufacturer, and built it to over $150 million in annual revenue.

  • During COVID, RPP pivoted hard into hand sanitizer. The rise was fast. The collapse was faster, and I lost $35 million personally.

  • Every company I’ve built since is called Rock Solid: “build on the rock, not on the sand.” The name is the lesson, made permanent.

  • I joined Board of Advisors because when my company was melting down, I had attorneys to call and no peers.

  • The loss gave me back time with my twin boys. That trade is the real story of the episode. You can watch the full conversation below.

I’m Eric Zwigart. I built an oil and chemical company (RPP Products) to over $150 million in annual revenue, lost $35 million personally when the business collapsed, and rebuilt my life around real estate and my twin boys. Every company I’ve started since carries the same name: Rock Solid.

I recently sat down with Jimmy Ralph, CEO of Board of Advisors, on episode 172 of the Board of Advisors Podcast and told the whole story. If you found this page by searching my name, here are the six questions people actually ask, starting with that one, which you just read.

The full conversation: Board of Advisors Podcast, Episode 172, with host Jimmy Ralph. Prefer YouTube? Watch it there.

What did Eric Zwigart do before real estate?

Before real estate, I spent my career building an oil and chemical business. I founded RPP Products, a Southern California automotive oil and chemical manufacturer, and grew it to over $150 million in annual revenue.

The path there was ordinary in the best way. I served in the US Marine Corps Reserves as a Military Police officer from 1995 to 2001, through my college years, and earned a BS in Business Management from California University of Pennsylvania in 1998. I started in sales at Chalet Products Company, worked my way up to VP of Sales, and then went out on my own with RPP.

RPP got recognized along the way. In 2018 I won the Spirit of the Entrepreneur Awards in two categories, “General Entrepreneur” and “Best of the Best,” and later came back as a judge. In 2020 I was a finalist for “COVID Innovator Entrepreneur.”

That last award name tells you where this story is going.

What happened to RPP Products?

COVID happened. And then a pivot that went too far, too fast. When hand sanitizer disappeared from shelves in 2020, an oil and chemical company was one of the few businesses actually equipped to make it. So we did.

The idea came to me on a road trip to Havasu with my boys. As I told Jimmy: “I was making 30,000 gallons a day of hand sanitizer within 30 days of just coming up with the idea.” We produced an FDA-approved product, opened a 180,000-square-foot facility in Butler, Pennsylvania (my hometown), creating more than 40 jobs, and donated sanitizer to shelters, food banks, and first responders.

Then it went to my head. “I somehow thought I became the hand sanitizer king of the world.”

The market turned all at once. As I told Jimmy on the episode: when demand died, I had 100 truckloads of sanitizer sitting in my warehouses, and at Walmart, at the bottom, it was going for about ten cents a bottle.

“Obviously I stayed in too long, got a little greedy.”

That sentence is the whole collapse. Not bad luck. Not a black swan. A builder who put a $150 million company on sand and watched the tide come in. “I thought everything I touched turned to gold until it didn’t.”

I lost $35 million. I’ve already written the full lesson from that loss. You can read it in I Lost $35 Million. Here’s the Only Lesson That Matters.

Why are Eric Zwigart’s companies called Rock Solid?

Because the name is the lesson. RPP was a big company built on one product wave, one moment of momentum. Sand. The name on everything I build now is a daily reminder not to do that again.

Here’s how I put it on the episode: “That’s why my companies are all called Rock Solid now, because I want to build on the rock, not on any sand there. So biblically, that’s the reference there.”

As a philosophy, building on the rock means four things to me:

  • Don’t build on one product, one moment, or one wave of momentum.

  • Name your own greed before the market names it for you. I stayed in too long, and I say so on tape.

  • Don’t claim certainty about the future. “Hopefully” is my word, on purpose.

  • Keep people around you who will tell you the truth, especially in a crisis.

It also means building businesses that don’t run on my adrenaline. As I said on the show: “Hopefully it’s working like a machine without me having to be so involved in the businesses. But I’ve always been in there and it’s hard to get me out of there.” The systems thinking behind that came from working with Carl Gould and the Board of Advisors community.

Why did Eric Zwigart join Board of Advisors?

Because when my company was melting down, I had no peers to turn to. I had attorneys.

“A $150 million company melting down is not fun.” When it started, there was nobody in my corner who had lived through something like it. “I didn’t have anybody to turn to at the time. I had attorneys only at that point… It just turns into a mess.”

The part that stays with me: “I had all the customers still wanting to stay. No one wanted to leave… All I did would just need to restructure.” I believe a restructure was on the table. I’ll never know for sure, because I didn’t have a room of peers to think it through with. Just billable hours.

That’s what Board of Advisors is for me now: “relationships and friendships and being able to bounce things off of folks, and doing it in a real big crisis moment.” I didn’t have that in my crisis. I want it before the next one, and I want to be that person for somebody else in theirs.

What is Eric Zwigart doing now?

Real estate. And soccer practice. I run Rock Solid Capital Investments LLC, and I’m rebuilding, this time on the rock. “But doing 150 million a year, 150 employees, I learned a lot about business. I have a lot of knowledge on business. I have a lot of feelings on what makes sense and doesn’t make sense. So hopefully that helps me rebuild faster.” I also host the Rock Solid Conversations podcast and co-authored Success Strategies with Jack Canfield and other entrepreneurs.

But the bigger change is where my hours go.

Losing the company felt “almost like losing a parent, but it’s losing something that you’ve worked your whole life for and nothing you can do to control it.” What pulled me out of that wasn’t a business plan. “That meltdown made me focus on the kids… I’ve got two twins that are 11 and super cute and I love being in their life now. Which I wasn’t when I was doing all of that, running around for that bigger company. So now I’m really starting to enjoy their lives and I’m in it a lot more and coaching. I love it.”

“Soccer’s a ton. I get them every other week, and we coach. I mean, what am I, six, eight hours a week in soccer stuff with them.”

On the episode, Jimmy brought up a fellow BA member’s “18 summers” idea: that we only get about 18 summers with our kids. “It just hits the nail on the head… I see that and now I feel it.” My dad “passed away being an ADHD entrepreneur all his life, and there was a relationship gap in all of his relationships. And we always wanted to know why. Well, now I kind of get it and I see it.”

There’s a full-circle piece to this I didn’t notice until later: the hand sanitizer idea that cost me everything was born on a road trip with my boys. And the loss it caused is what gave me my time with them back.

“Sometimes the money doesn’t… does equal that family time.”

If you want the longer version of the whole arc, it’s on my story page, and my other interviews and appearances are on the media page.

FAQ

What happened to Eric Zwigart’s company?

RPP Products, my oil and chemical company, was doing over $150 million in annual revenue when COVID hit. We pivoted into hand sanitizer, the market collapsed, and the dominoes took the company down. I lost $35 million personally, and I rebuilt in real estate.

What is Rock Solid?

Rock Solid is the name I put on every company I’ve built since the collapse. It’s a biblical reference (build on the rock, not on the sand), and it’s my reminder to build things that don’t depend on one product, one moment, or one wave of momentum.

What awards has Eric Zwigart won?

In 2018 I won the Spirit of the Entrepreneur Awards in two categories, “General Entrepreneur” and “Best of the Best,” and later served as a judge for the awards. In 2020 I was a finalist for “COVID Innovator Entrepreneur.”

Where can I hear the full interview?

You can hear the full conversation on the Board of Advisors Podcast: episode 172 with host Jimmy Ralph, about 23 minutes, recorded at the Board of Advisors quarterly meeting in Dallas.

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